no place can
be more contemptible or forbidding; in short, it serves only as a
nursery for beggars and thieves, and is a daily reflection on those who
suffer it to be in its abandoned condition."

During the eighteenth century, a tendency to establish themselves in the
western portion of the town was discernible amongst the great law lords.
For instance, Lord Cowper, who during his tenure of the seals resided in
Powis House, during his latter years occupied a mansion in Great George
Street, Westminster--once a most fashionable locality, but now a street
almost entirely given up to civil engineers, who have offices there, but
usually live elsewhere. In like manner, Lord Harcourt, moving westwards
from Lincoln's Inn Fields, established himself in Cavendish Square. Lord
Henley, on retiring from the family mansion in Lincoln's Inn Fields,
settled in Grosvenor Square. Lord Camden lived in Hill Street, Berkeley
Square. On being entrusted with the sole custody of the seals, Lord
Apsley (better known as Lord Chancellor Bathurst) made his first
state-progress to Westminster Hall from his house in Dean Street, Soho;
but afterwards moving farther west, he built Apsley House (familiar to
every Englishman as the late Duke of Wellington's town mansion) upon the
site of Squire Western's favorite inn--the 'Hercules' Pillars.'

CHAPTER V.

THE OLD LAW QUARTER.

Fifteen years since the writer of this page used to dine with a
conveyancer--a lawyer of an old and almost obsolete school--who had a
numerous household, and kept a hospitable table in Lincoln's Inn Fields;
but the conveyancer was almost the last of his species. The householding
legal _resident_ of the Fields, like the domestic resident of the
Temple, has become a feature of the past. Among the ordinary nocturnal
population of the square called Lincoln's Inn Fields, may be found a few
solicitors who sleep by night where they work by day, and a sprinkling
of young barristers and law students who have residential chambers in
grand houses that less than a century since were tenanted by members of
a proud and splendid aristocracy; but the gentle families have by this
time altogether disappeared from the mansions.

But long before this aristocratic secession, the lawyers took possession
of a new quarter. The great charm of Lincoln's Inn Fields had been the
freshness of the air which played over the open space. So also the
recommendation of Great Queen Street had been the